Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Headhunting in Metropolitan

a rainy little day in between more significant ones, perfect for renaissance headhunting in Metropolitan. Among the thousands and thousands of paintings, I skipped everything except portraits with a straight look that can pierce through centuries










But with Rembrant, it's time to cut it


...because with Baroque, there is way too much pink flesh, fuss and ugly babies to endure





Cherub here, cherub there. The 17th centurians must have looked at this in a very different way. With me the flying meatballs evoke visions of violence involving a baseball bat. So time to head back to rainy East Side.

Monday, October 8, 2012

A message from Borges



"In the pleasant course of our residence on earth, María Kodama and I have traveled and savored many regions, and they have suggested many photographs and many pages of text. (...poet Alberto) Girri observed that they could be interwoven into a prudently chaotic book. Here is that book. It does not consist of series of texts illustrated by photograps or a series of photographs explained by texts. Each section embodies a union of words and images. (...) María Kodama and I have shared the joy and surprise of finding sounds, languages, twilights, cities, gardens and people, all of them distinctly different and unique. These pages would wish to be a monument to that long adventure that still goes on."

(lazy Sunday in Human Relations Bookstore, Flushing Avenue)

Saturday, October 6, 2012

again in Little Skips.

All day I've done absolutely nothing, just laundry, biking around a bit and reading "Freedom", slowly. Good thing: Little Skips is playing hip hop for a change. A bit of energy into an out-of battery Saturday. Take it away, Mac Miller


Sunday, September 30, 2012

Stockholm, U.S.


"Stockholm Street was named for the Stockholm brothers, Abraham and Andrew, who owned farmland in Bushwick during the mid-nineteenth century. 


The land had earlier been inhabited by the Mespachtes Indians, who were driven out by Dutch, French Huguenot and English settlers during the 17th Century. The settlers grew lettuce, corn, potatoes, cauliflower, fruits and tobacco sold to Brooklyn and Manhattan.

As Brooklyn and New York City grew in 19th Century, immigrants from other European countries joined the Dutch and English settlers. Germans became the dominant population in Bushwick. Factories were founded, and brewing industry became so successful, that the area was dubbed the beer capital of the Northeast.

Another wave of immigrants settled in the neighborhood. After WWI, the Germans were replaced by Italians, mostly from Sicily and Southern regions.


In 1960s and 1970s the breweries in Bushwick were closed. Meanwhile, a new  policy of raising rent for welfare recipients meant that they now brought higher rents for landlords than ordinary tenants. Landlords begun to fill vacant units with welfare recipients, and by the mid-seventies, half of Bushwick’s residents were on public assistance.


On the night of July 13, 1977, a major blackout occurred in New York City. Arsonlooting, and vandalism followed in poor neighborhoods across the city. Bushwick was among the worst hit areas. Shops and stores were looted and burned, and fires spread to residential buildings. After the riots were over and the fires were put out, residents saw "some streets that looked like Brooklyn Heights, and others that looked like Dresden in 1945".

Those who could afford to leave abandoned the area. Following white flight, the area became populated by working class African AmericanPuerto Rican and other Caribbean American families.

The neighborhood was a hotbed of poverty and drug dealing. In the 1990s, it remained a dangerous area, with 77 murders, 80 rapes, and 2,242 robberies in 1990. In the middle of the 2000s, the City of New York began pouring resources into the neighborhood, through a program called the Bushwick InitiativeNarcotics Control Unit and the NYPD joined to reduce drug dealing in the area.

Today, ethnic groups common in the neighborhood are Puerto Ricans, Hondurans, Dominicans, Mexicans, Ecuadorians, African Americans, Haitians, Jamaicans, and Afro-Caribbean. There are also smaller numbers of Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, and Arabs. Since 2000, reduced crime rates and a shortage of cheap housing in nearby neighborhoods have brought an influx of young professionals and artists, moving into converted warehouse lofts, brownstones, limestone-brick townhouses and other renovated buildings."

And so, here I am, in the corner of Stockholm and Myrtle avenue!

Thursday, September 27, 2012

"Since 1998, Ingo Giezendanner alias GRRRR documents the urban spaces in which he stays at the moment. From Zurich via Nairobi, New York and Karachi to Cairo and New Orleans he drew his surroundings on location with pen on paper..."

The great, great "Urban recordings" by GRRR is now completely online.
http://www.grrrr.net/urban/grr30_002.html
Here's a few beautiful ones from NY:



Wednesday, September 26, 2012

I finally got my camera fixed! I had to wait for the Jewish New Year holiday to end first, since apparently all decent camera shops in Manhattan are run by Jews. At least the famous (and huge) B & H is - nice work outfits!